ALEX POWERS

March 30, 2020

Alex Powers, 79, was born in Coeburn, VA. He passed away on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 in Garden City, S.C. of severe dementia.

William Alexander Powers was preceded in death by his parents, Elsie May Weston Powers and William (Bill) Coscar Powers; and brother, Michael Thomas Powers.

Surviving are family members, Emma Lou Powers of Williamsburg, Virginia and Allen Weston Powers of Bell, Florida.

Alex graduated from Coeburn High School in 1958 where he was admittedly not a serious student but was a very good athlete. He was selected captain in all three sports (football, basketball, and baseball at which he had a workout with the Chicago Cubs) in his senior year.

He attended and graduated from Emory and Henry College in Emory, Virginia with a degree in

Mathematics in 1963.

After trying his hand at teaching math and art in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida he was hired by the fledgling space program, NASA, where he was a computer scientist. This was so new that he had not studied computers in college, so he had to learn on the job. He related later with a grin that he had spent three days looking for a misplaced comma in a program. While in the Cape Canaveral area he became familiar with a group of serious artists and pretty soon decided that he wanted to follow that lifestyle. In order to make a living starting in 1970 he supported himself by doing caricatures of tourists on the beach at Myrtle Beach at $4 each.

He gradually gained knowledge and a following for his work and became a popular painter (won the 1997 American Watercolor Society Gold Medal), and taught classes in his apartment studio and in other venues like the annual SpringMaid Workshops, and workshops in Taos, New Mexico with several teachers and lots of students who rotated around from day to day. He also has judged many art shows all over the United States and a few foreign countries.

He authored a book “Painting People in Watercolor, a design approach” which stayed in publication for 17 years and was translated into French and was published in France.

We are all proud of a boy who grew up among the coal mines of the Appalachians to do it his way!!!

Due to the current pandemic there will be no service at this time, but with the help of his long-time artist friend and helper in his group classes, Vera Tracey, we are planning a Celebration of Life for Alex in Myrtle Beach this fall.

Information provided by Sturgill Funeral Home, Wise, VA .